Category Archives: Unfair Competition

Defense that Defendant Employee was “Set Up” Does Not Hold Up in Contempt Case

In a case that was decided last year but that last week received attention from Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, Judge Renee Dupuis of the Norfolk County Superior Court ruled that a defendant employee violated a preliminary injunction by hatching a plan either to steal clients from his former employer or to destroy his former employer’s business.

In Angstrom Advanced, Inc. v. Mziguir, the employer,… More

Executives (and One Law Firm) Allegedly Behaving Badly

A number of cases involving former executives have received national attention recently and serve as a good reminder that trade-secret, non-solicitation, and non-competition controversies can arise at the highest level of a company. Another recent case also serves as a reminder that trade-secret claims should be filed only when there is a good-faith basis to do so. Consider the following:

  • In In re: High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation,…
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Report: Employee Theft of Information is Pervasive

Multiple media outlets (see here  and here, for example) have been covering an alarming report jointly issued recently by the Ponemon Institute, an Arizona-based research group, and Symantec Corp., that data theft is common among departing employees. As reported in the Washington Post, the most significant finding of a joint survey of employees who left a job in 2008 was that almost 60% of ex-employees admitted to taking company data of one sort or another. The most commonly identified kinds of records taken were “email lists,”… More

Recent Decision Highlights Risks of the “No-Noncompete” Situation

While some in the business community continue to focus on whether the ability to enforce noncompetes in Massachusetts places the state at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis Silicon Valley, a recent decision from the Massachusetts Superior Court’s Business Litigation Session — Network Systems Architects Corp. v. Dimitruk — highlights the difficulties departing employees and their future employers can face even in the absence of a contract restricting post-employment activities. … More